The Debt Treadmill and Soft Default

Freddie outlines soft default via inflation, debt servicing costs, and political reluctance to hard defaults.

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Episode notes

Freddie New studied the classics and has spent years obsessing over one question: how does a superpower destroy itself? The answer, he argues, is always the same - it starts with the money.

In this conversation we map the fall of Rome directly onto the West today. The Roman denarius lost 97% of its purchasing power over 150 years. The British pound has lost 95% of its in the last century alone. The parallels don't stop there - military overstretch, a dependent population kept loyal by the state, leaders who can't stop the printing even when they know it's killing them. Rome couldn't stop. We can't either.

Freddie has read all 1.5 million words of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In this conversation he explains what that teaches us about where we are right now - and whether there is a way out.

In this episode:

•⁠ ⁠How Rome debased the denarius from 100% silver to 3% over 300 years

•⁠ ⁠Why currency debasement always starts slowly and why it can never be stopped

•⁠ ⁠The eerie similarity between Rome's military dependence and modern welfare states

•⁠ ⁠What Diocletian's price controls tell us about every government's response to inflation

•⁠ ⁠Why Constantine's hard money reset saved the empire for another generation

•⁠ ⁠What hard money offers that fiat never can

•⁠ ⁠Whether the West can course correct or whether collapse is now inevitable

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Currency Collapse Starts

00:01:17 - Rome vs Britain